


One Swallow Does Not Make A Spring

by rivendellrose



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M, Kissing, Reunions, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2015-07-22
Packaged: 2018-04-10 17:25:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4400804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivendellrose/pseuds/rivendellrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the end of Series 3, Jack has a lot of time to think about the significance of a particular bird, and a particular brooch. Fortunately, Phryne clarifies things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Swallow Does Not Make A Spring

**Author's Note:**

> For [hearts_blood](http://archiveofourown.org/users/hearts_blood/pseuds/hearts_blood), who makes me watch awesome things and then gives me all the best ideas to write for them.

"Swallows always return home," Phryne's mother told her, showing her the pretty little pin that her grandmother had left to her. "No matter how far they fly, they always come back to nest in the same place, year after year. And swallows were a sign for sailors, to guarantee their safe return home. So no matter how far you go, Phryne, this will keep you safe and bring you back home."

Of course it hadn't worked. Like most things, her father had ruined it, pawning the little brooch for beer, and then Phryne had been caught trying to steal it back from the pawn shop. The store owner groused and cursed under his breath, saying he'd seen her eyeing the piece for days, staring in through the window at the case where it sat, and coming into his shop, pretending to look at other things but always lingering on that brooch. He said that meant the theft was planned, and that made it worse somehow than if he'd thought that she just had a magpie's eye and couldn't resist something pretty, even if she couldn't afford it. The police constable who'd brought her in was a nice sort, though, and it hadn't taken much in the way of her plentiful guile for Phryne to start crying when she explained to him why she'd taken into her head to steal the little bauble. The whole story had poured out of her in sobs and sputters, and the constable nodded patiently, then gave her his handkerchief to dry her eyes and blow her nose.

"It's a rough thing, young miss," he told her, "but the truth is, even if your grandmother left it to you, you being a child it's your father's house you're living in, and everything in it belongs to him, to do with as he likes. It's his money that pays the rent--"

Phryne snorted derisively - it was her mother's laundry work that paid the rent, most months, even when one of her father's schemes actually worked out positively for a change - but the constable raised a finger and kept talking.

"In the eyes of the law, I mean, Miss, and that's what counts. He pawned the little thing, and it's him that has to come back for it, or not, as he likes. I'd say the same thing to my own niece, I'm afraid, if it was her sitting there, or my little sister."

"Yes, but if it was your father--"

The young man shook his head sharply. "There's nothing to be done, Miss. It's not yours to take, and that's all that can be said, unless your father pays the money to bring it back. I think this time we can just let that be the end of matters, though, don't you? Even an honest girl makes a mistake now and then, and I expect you've learned your lesson."

She hadn't, of course, unless the lesson was to be quicker and more careful next time, and to cry and apologize freely if she got caught, but at least it meant she got away without any further consequences apart from the loss of the brooch. That, of course, was well and truly lost long before Phryne could reasonably make another attempt at the pawn shop, and the store owner would have been watching her too closely by then, anyway. Soon enough she'd flown away up north just like the swallows herself, and while she never forgot the brooch, it wasn't the highest thing on her mind when it came to lists either of things she'd lost or things her father had ruined. Nor, when the matter came down to brass tacks, of things she'd tried to steal. But her mother had been right about swallows always coming home, and soon enough Phryne had found her way back to Melbourne to stay, at least for a time, until her wings started to ache for open skies again and her heart itched to see new horizons once more.

She would come back with the spring and the swallows, Jack told himself, and pretended to himself that he wasn't always watching the sky. Watching her house when he drove by, hoping to see the bustle that would indicate the return of the household's mistress. Watching on the roads all over the city for the bright, brief gleam of the Hispano-Suiza, always driving too quickly, always making his heart pound and his stomach lurch with the fear of losing her. How much would he have given, some days, to spot her weaving swiftly through traffic, tossing a cheery wave, and to have the opportunity to scold her again once his heart had settled back down out of his throat? And he looked for her, too, inevitably, at every crime scene he attended, every visit to the morgue, and every witness interview to be endured without the relief of her constant, aggravating, wonderful interruptions and interjections.

Mac didn't like it any better than he did, giving him the word on pathology exams without Phryne's company, though she seemed to have warmed slightly to him, as well, and didn't act like he was nothing but a hated male interloper anymore. There was something almost tender in the brusque way she offered him a shot of whiskey, once, and when he took it and met her eyes he wasn't surprised to note the sympathetic look she cast him. She knew, then, and at least understood, if not approved. That was good enough.

Collins got back from his honeymoon, and from what he said he and Dot, now Mrs. Collins, were settling in quite nicely together, though Dot missed her boss and her work. Privately, Jack thought Miss Fisher ought to hurry up and return home, before her assistant was in no condition to be helping out with murder investigations again for some time, but he wasn't about to say that to Collins. Deep down, he suspected the young man wasn't too eager to lose his happy housewife to detecting once again. That was a problem that could wait until Miss Fisher's return, however.

If Miss Fisher returned.

With the swallows, with the swallows, she'll come home with the swallows...

He'd noticed the brooch on her sweater when she was leaving - how could he have missed it? - and had taken it as a further sign from her, that she'd come back. That she wouldn't forget him entirely the first time a handsome bloke crossed her path, or at least, he hoped, that she'd remember him again sometime after. That she'd lied about the policeman letting her keep the brooch her father had sold didn't factor in - it had been an innocent lie, he had no doubt, intended merely to put a happier spin on her childhood sorrow than the truth as he'd found it in her juvenile records had held. Jack had no doubt the police constable would have let her keep it if he thought he could get away with it, too - he knew how persuasive Phryne Fisher could be as a grown woman, and he had no illusions, looking at her old mug-shots from her childhood, that she'd been equally so as a young girl, despite her grubbiness and the defiance, more spirit than experience at that time, documented in the old photos. She'd tacked on the happy ending to cheer him up, he felt sure, and never intended him to really believe it on later reflection. Her stories were like that - glib and light, they flipped and flitted just like swift birds, dancing on the wing, black one minute and white the next depending on what side they showed.

What that implied about the words she'd said at the airfield, Jack preferred not to think.

She'd left in spring, though, and a whole year was a long time to wait to be confounded and flustered and bothered by that marvelous, aggravating woman. Without her the summer felt long and thick, investigations felt dull and rote, everything was expected and nothing new and surprising. They wrote letters, but the delivery service took ages, and at first her postcards, jotted off on random refueling stops along the way, showed up all out of order and disjointed, so that he could hardly tell where she was or how the trip was going at any given time. He'd never much liked planes - he preferred to keep his feet or at least a good pair of wheels on the ground, and surrendering her to the endless skies and sea was the most unnerving leap of faith he'd ever taken, greater even than kissing her on that cold morning in the airfield.

I'd come after you in a minute, he told her in one letter, if I only knew where you were. I'm afraid if you don't settle down in one place for more than two letters in a row, you may have to come back here. A detective inspector's salary won't allow for the sort of globe-trotting you're inclined to, you know.

He'd worried for days that she'd toss that letter over the Pacific and never think about him again, after he sent that one, and then tried to convince himself it was all for the best, then nearly swallowed his tongue when another postcard showed up, par avion, with the simple words "Two more weeks and I'll be in London to stay. Meet me there. Soon. Phryne."

He saw the swallows dipping over the bay when Collins drove him to the port. It had to be a good sign. And when, weeks later, he finally arrived in England for the first time since the war, his heart nearly clawed its way out of his throat when he spotted Phryne waiting on the dock, her brilliant red coat, the fur trim billowing around her bright smile and her waving hands, white-gloved, standing out in the dull grays and blacks of the London winter. She pushed through the crowd and threw herself into his arms, and though he vaguely heard hoots and hollers from the onlookers around them, he couldn't quite bring himself to care. Nobody in London knew him anyway, apart from her, and he'd waited too damned long to have her mouth on his again to give a damn if anyone else was watching. He gathered her close, and breathed in the scent of her perfume as with the desperation of a man gasping oxygen after a long dive.

"I have something for you," she told him, her eyes dancing and her cheeks pink with more than just the London chill, when she broke the kiss. He fumbled with the little box and its neat paper wrapping, but as soon as he opened it up he felt like he was soaring. Nestled there in tissue paper was a little tie pin, made of gold gorgeously enameled, in the shape of a swallow.

"You know they can't be kept caged," she said as she pinned it into his tie. "They won't live like that. It's... it's not in their nature."

"I know," he assured her, and caught her hand in his. "I don't want--"

"But they always come home," she interrupted. "Always. Once they've... found that place that belongs to them. They always come back there, no matter where else they might go."

"That's... all I'm asking," he said, feeling a bit nonsensical for having this conversation, probably the most important conversation they'd ever had, couched in such metaphors.

She disentangled their hands, straightened his tie with that proprietary look she always took with him, and then smoothed her hands softly down to straighten his lapels as well. "Well. Good, then. Shall we go?"

His head spun. Had he agreed to something he hadn't noticed? "Where?"

Phryne laughed. "Wherever you like. But how about dinner, to start with? We have months to catch up on. I want to hear all of it. The cases I've missed, and Hugh and Dot must be back from their honeymoon by now..."

"So... you're not going back immediately?"

"You just got here, Jack, you can't possibly be tired of London yet."

"But you've been here for weeks."

"Well, yes. But most of that was spent handling my parents, and now that that mess is done I can finally relax a little and have fun. So you're just in time, Jack." She folded her hand into the crook of his arm and began walking, in a direction that seemed perfectly random to him but, knowing her, lead straight into the heart of trouble. "I was thinking we might take some time at my favorite Turkish bath later... you did say you'd always wondered what went on in those..."


End file.
